Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Sadly, it turns out that putting a coffee shop and an art gallery on the corner is not the ticket to economic revitalization:

One of the most influential thinkers about cities in postwar America, wants you to know that he got almost everything about cities wrong.

If you live in an urban center in North America, the United Kingdom, or Australia, you are living in Richard Florida’s world. Fifteen years ago, he argued that an influx of what he called the “creative classes” — artists, hipsters, tech workers — were sparking economic growth in places like the Bay Area. Their tolerance, flexibility, and eccentricity dissolved the rigid structures of industrial production and replaced them with the kinds of workplaces and neighborhoods that attracted more young people and, importantly, more investment.

His observations quickly formed the basis of a set of breezy technical solutions. If decaying cities wanted to survive, they had to open cool bars, shabby-chic coffee shops, and art venues that attract young, educated, and tolerant residents. Eventually, the mysterious alchemy of the creative economy would build a new and prosperous urban core.

Today, even Florida recognizes that he was wrong. The rise of the creative class in places like New York, London, and San Francisco created economic growth only for the already rich, displacing the poor and working classes. The problems that once plagued inner cities have moved to the suburbs.

To make his case for the creative class, Florida subjected it to strange quantifications. Combining census data on occupation, education, “coolness factor” (based on the number of young people and the quality of “nightlife and culture”) and, bizarrely, the number of gay male residents, he developed a “Bohemia Index” to calculate this group’s magical effect on urban economic growth.

Florida reassures readers that all human beings are fundamentally creative animals, but only a third of us can make a living that way. The creative classes — to which you may, unknowingly, belong — include journalists, college professors, tech workers, graphic designers, and artists of any kind: basically anyone not working in the repetitious and decidedly uncreative manufacturing or service sectors.

The “creative classes” both diagnosed the present state of cities and offered recommendations for future action. Along with Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida has served as an inspiration for mayors, developers, and planners who pedestrianized streets, built bike lanes, and courted cultural attractions like art galleries and theaters.

So, as it turns out, entertainment is not the core of the economy. Someone had better let Disney know the bad news. I suspect they'll need to come up with some other metric that serves as a more accurate proxy for race.

that's just another wrinkle of something i pointed out a long time ago; that "Arteests" fetishize both Art and the importance of Art to Society ... but create little to nothing of actual Value.

they certainly don't create Wealth. they *may* create Beauty ( which has a Value of it's own, for which you might exchange Wealth ), but Art is fundamentally a sink for surplus Resources. especially current Po-Mo "Art", which considers the creation of Beauty to be Bourgeois and deserving of destruction.

Dave Sim, for all his Reactionary stances, was All In on the supremacy of the importance of Art.

the problem is it worked out ok for the cities themselves. They got to move poor people out and replace them with people who were already rich.

Its the suburbs that paid the price. Well... that and the already poor. And those so poor they could not move. Reading Spike Lee's take on what's happened to Harlem because of this idiocy is interesting. In a sense... Spike was writing an Alt-Right piece.

It's the Federally funded mandatory solution in every US city. "Infill housing", mass transit to some areas but not others, traffic-choking "beautification", low income housing built for 3X the cost of regular housing. Socialized costs, private profits and punishment of the middle class.

All because one guy wrote some crap that gave an excuse to the looters and rentiers to do what they already wanted to do.

"The problems that once plagued inner cities have moved to the suburbs."

A feature, not a bug, to TPTB. Section 8, anyone? A classic piece from The Atlantic, though rather annoying in its "who'da thunk it?" disingenuousness:https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/306872/

Ferguson was >90% White in the 1980s. Look at it now. San Francisco was 13% Black in the 1980s-- 6% now. These are not accidents.

I was just perusing "Jacobin" yesterday. Interesting rag, all the leftist goals, minus some of the US cultural Marxist assumptions. I also remember "Who's your City" and thinking to myself my goodness, people are actually going to believe this tripe.

I went to a local "farmers market" over the weekend. Very few farms selling their produce. Lots and lots of hippie tents selling candles, homemade jewelry, and other assorted crap. I couldn't buy fresh cut herbs, but If I wanted a spinner, boy howdy was I in luck. The coolness factor Florida wrote was desirable is really a plague of modern day gypsies looking to camp out, sell their wares, and move on to the next drum circle/ city that is currently trying to convince itself all the for rent/lease signs are just an illusion.

Not being anything but realistic, Men, real men, want their beer and broads and boats and manly stuff. Even I recognized these facts years ago when I advised a computer manufacturer for which I was on an evaluation committee. They advertised in the best business mags. I told them Sport Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Want to sell to the average man. Think average. Difficult even in the best of times. Lust always sells.

@10Ferguson was >90% White in the 1980s. Look at it now. San Francisco was 13% Black in the 1980s-- 6% now. These are not accidents.

The Robert Taylor housing project in Chicongo wasn't torn down out of altruism or pity. It was torn down because the real estate it squatted on had a great view of the lake, and was worth a whole lot more to the right people. Central Chicongo has a lot fewer black people now than 10 years ago, and lucky Dubuque, Iowa is where some of them moved. But (((Rahm Emmanuel))) and his pals made a lot of money, so it's all good.

Anonymous Conservative is right. r-selected people do everything they can to insure the growth and prosperity of other r-selected people. Turning your city centers into a hippie colony Weimar Republic not only does that, it also (a) squeezes out whatever K-selected people might have been remaining in the city and (b) sends the most violent and disruptive of the r-selected to fight the K-selected white flighters out in the suburbs. Richard Florida probably meant this to happen all along. His shock is merely for show.

Just finished reading Antifragile last night. Talk about someone who doesn't have skin in the game! "Read my book to see the future!" to "Read my book to see why I was wrong but this time I'm totally right!"

Along with Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida has served as an inspiration for mayors, developers, and planners who pedestrianized streets, built bike lanes, and courted cultural attractions like art galleries and theaters.

Nate nails it.

This load of offal provided cover for asset-stripping taxpayers in favor of politically-connected cronies high and low. Chicago's mayor(s) could get filthier-rich giving no-bid contracts to buddies for "redevelopment projects" such that cheap real estate (occupied by Black welfare housing) could be repurposed (after the denizens, er, former residents were dispersed to parts of Iowa, Milwaukee, and Rockford.)

Just as FDR's vaunted Great Depression programs exclusively targeted political swing states for getting the loot and jobs, every so-called "redevelopment program" for government is nothing but a veneer slapped on naked theft, nepotism and vote-buying.

Another example of cargo-cult economics; naked savages thought that if they built airstrips, planes laden with cargo would emerge out of the sky. Florida should have known better.

Bernie Made-off has nothing on this character. Wonder how many TED-tanks Florida gave? Did he every actually believe his own bullshit? Now that he's proved his con-man cred, he can run for office wearing the Gay Old Pedo jersey - perhaps for Mayor of Detroilet.

Somewhat related, Amazon bought Whole Foods so they can get in on the EBT cash funnel. Everything the Washington Post publishes will support that money maker for Amazon, which owns the Washington Post. Amazon has a vested interest in keeping as many blacks on welfare as possible.

Oh Good Grief!I hated those people and fought them every step of the way.I remember one in Texas that decided it was so important to require every business to have a bike rack that he slipped into a city ordinance without telling anyone, then had the hubris to walk around telling all the retail shops they had to comply. These people are dangerous and they have waaaay too much initiative. (No, he was not fired but he should have been.)

I get the same nonsense from certain elements in the Chamber of Commerce who keep insisting that tourism dollars are a weird force multiplier that create quick prosperity for the natives. No matter how many times I prove this to be false, they keep running up the flag. Of course, the quickest way to get these tourist dollars is a combination of historical preservation and music and booze. Always the same way and always expecting heavy public subsidies. Just how much subsidy does it take to create jobs for bellhops, waitresses, hotel clerks, housekeepers, and sidewalk hawkers?

The most popular and most expensive boondoggle in larger cities is Mass Transit, whether it is public-owned or massively public-subsidized. The bottom line is mass transit is a huge welfare program. It does not solve the problem of congestion or parking. It does not solve the transportation problem. It does not reduce air pollution or noise. It does not reduce crime. It does not make everyone like each other. And it is not actually FOR everybody.

There are so many lies put on billboards and televisions regarding what will solve all the problems (at the same time), there really should be an award for the best liars. Of course, there is....it is called public office.

Somewhat related, Amazon bought Whole Foods so they can get in on the EBT cash funnel. Everything the Washington Post publishes will support that money maker for Amazon, which owns the Washington Post. Amazon has a vested interest in keeping as many blacks on welfare as possible.

Amazon's current revenue is currently double the entire snap budget. Snap is roughly one tenth of grocery store sales.

Florida reassures readers that all human beings are fundamentally creative animals, but only a third of us can make a living that way.

More like 1% for artists. I was a graphic artist way back when and could barely make ends meet. Many artists in the family, plus some I work with, none of whom make a living at it because they can't. Only the best of the best have a chance and even those often struggle.

Florida's "theory" is, of course, simply narcissism on a large scale. "To be successful, a city must have more of what I personally prefer." Not content with that, he must make it clear that those who cater to his personal preferences are the best people, because they are uniquely "creative," unlike those worthless proles.

Facts? Empirical support? What are those?

It's interesting that someone would choose "Jacobin" as the title of a magazine. Fun fact: while allegations of the use of tanned human skin for bookbinding and other purposes have often been made falsely for purposes of sensationalism/ propaganda, there are a number of known examples of this practice. For instance, there are several extant copies of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the French Constitution of 1793... that are bound with the skin of victims of the Terror.

As first food production and increasingly all industry eliminates most human "work" inputs, most of what's left, work-wise, looks increasingly like people engaged in entertaining each other.

This shouldn't be troubling, except as I understand it, the rise of the Marxist version of Leftism came with "intellectuals" disgruntled that grubby factory owners were far richer and comfortable.

Absent a deeply-shared sense of "keep your mitts off other people's stuff," a society of mostly either non-working people (dependents or parasites) or people who work in "entertainment" (which includes the chattering class) makes for a society of mischief and political con artistry.

A revolution in the structure of the political economy seems certain, and at least part of it will be a constant war between the mob that votes to rob the dwindling producers blind and the increasingly powerful producers who attempt to buy the political apparatus out of self-preservation.

Or are we already there? Or will all this be pushed aside by indentitarian warfare?

I'm all for l'art pour l'art. But the axioms propping-up the Leftist's worldview of art are ... there are no words, actually -- whatever "delusional" plus "hilarious" plus "infuriating" plus "boring" (and a cause of boredom) would be.

That.

Anyway, none of it matters. The end of art was achieved with Kazimir Malevich's Black Square.

dc.sunsets wrote:such that cheap real estate (occupied by Black welfare housing) could be repurposed (after the denizens, er, former residents were dispersed to parts of Iowa, Milwaukee, and Rockford.)

In a certain way (not how they intended) it actually makes sense from an economic standpoint to have those denizens move to smaller towns and cities in the middle of nowhere.

Most major cities are located where they are because they have useful productive features (water ways, ports, large supply of natural resources, etc). Moving the people who don't do anything productive (in fact don't work at all) away from those resources makes sense. The problem is they do not replace them with manufacturing or production related people/industries. Instead they replace them with coffee shops, art galleries etc.

The other downside is the relocated denizens shatter existing communities and break down societal trust in previously functioning small towns/ suburbs.

Farmers markets are great for small businesses like actual farmers and small scale food product producers. This is often the first step in getting a product out to the public. However, your observation that useless artsy crap tends to dominate these venues without providing any real value to the community has a lot of truth to it. If portlands downtown saturday market disappeared it would have virtually no impact on thw community because it doesn't provide anything of necessity, just expensive kitsch and fast food stands. I have never once seen a stand providing fresh produce or small farm meat products there.

@33 haus frauMost "farmer's markets" are just another form of crunchy entertainment, like art house movies that serve tiny cups of overpriced "fair-trade" coffee. Fake rurality for metrosexual hipsters.

"I'm all for l'art pour l'art. But the axioms propping-up the Leftist's worldview of art are ... there are no words, actually -- whatever "delusional" plus "hilarious" plus "infuriating" plus "boring" (and a cause of boredom) would be"

Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word" does a pretty good job of putting some words to it.

Most "farmer's markets" are just another form of crunchy entertainment, like art house movies that serve tiny cups of overpriced "fair-trade" coffee. Fake rurality for metrosexual hipsters.

Right, a decent farmers market in a working-class area can be nice. No one selling bracelets or other garbage. Instead, selling largish boxes of fresh farm produce without a lot of middlemen. When you find one, oh boy, it's really great.

As first food production and increasingly all industry eliminates most human "work" inputs, most of what's left, work-wise, looks increasingly like people engaged in entertaining each other.

This is more of the same self-serving left bullshit, intended to make it sound like leftists are productive people and productive people are going away and we need more redistribution, like everything leftists say.

Automation is great. It makes a lot of things easier, but people will always work for their beer and to bring home bread to their wives and children, and leftists will always beg for redistribution of prestige and resources.

@37You are absolutely correct but as dh notes in @39, the good markets that serve the function of grocery stores but cut out the middle man so the producer and the customer can interact directly are a wonderful thing. Lots of small businesses producing value added products like bakery and condiments get their start there before they can get into retail outlets. Many small farmers use them as their full time access to the public. As long as the venue doesnt have too many pretensions to hipster crunchiness, the unprocessed farm foods are cheaper than their Whole Foods equivalents.

In a certain way (not how they intended) it actually makes sense from an economic standpoint to have those denizens move to smaller towns and cities in the middle of nowhere.

Not really. Its more expensive to provide services to low income groups that are on aid programs, in a rural or suburban area, than it is in a dense urban center. Having your underclass in dense urban centers if more cost effective all around. it makes it easier to isolate and police the crime the group generates and more efficient to provide services.

basementhomebrewer wrote:In a certain way (not how they intended) it actually makes sense from an economic standpoint to have those denizens move to smaller towns and cities in the middle of nowhere.no, those are often the people who work in the kitschy galleries and shabby-chic coffee shops. They are moved out because they tend to be bad for business if they hang out in the neighborhood. That's the purpose of public transit, to subsidise the removal of the poor from downtown neighborhoods.

@42 haus frau@37You are absolutely correct but as dh notes in @39, the good markets that serve the function of grocery stores but cut out the middle man so the producer and the customer can interact directly are a wonderful thing.

Ok, ok, Not All Farmer's Markets Are Like That, yours is special. Got it. Don't get your butterfly necklace in a twist.

So, currently, all the "creativity" has dried up, as the Narratives" only creativity is keeping up with the fish school's moves. No humor, total empty narcissism, shallowness and dishonesty rewarded, and it goes on and on.

30. I'm Not a Fascist. But My Sons Are. August 29, 2017 1:06 PMAnyway, none of it matters. The end of art was achieved with Kazimir Malevich's Black Square.

well, of course. especially once you know that "Forensic detail reveals of how Black Square was painted over a more complex and colorful composition."

ie - the Black Square isn't simply the rejection of Beauty via it's absence. once you know that it COVERS UP a colorful composition ( a proxy for that which might appeal to the eye ), the true Proletarian goal of destroying all things which might be construed as Beautiful is rendered quite forcefully.

haus frau wrote:Farmers markets are great for small businesses like actual farmers and small scale food product producers. This is often the first step in getting a product out to the public.

However, your observation that useless artsy crap tends to dominate these venues without providing any real value to the community has a lot of truth to it. If portlands downtown saturday market disappeared it would have virtually no impact on thw community because it doesn't provide anything of necessity, just expensive kitsch and fast food stands. I have never once seen a stand providing fresh produce or small farm meat products there.

We must be inordinanately blessed. We have a "trendy" local market, but it also has well over a score of regular vendors selling local produce, honey, meat, etc. They have the people selling expensive arty goods, but even those tend to high quality. There are maybe 1-3 venders selling what I'd consider junk art. I buy a lot of my produce there in the summer and have found some excellent meat suplliers there. I'm hoping that by delevoping relationships with these producers I can figure out ways for us all to be more resilient in the coming years. I can do without a hand thrown vase, but I want to know who's raising hens and how I can support them.

The problem with big cities like San Francisco is that they put strict limits on housing development. This is because the political power is in the hands of property owners and renters under rent control. So what you have are the "rich" who can afford houses and the homeless who sleep under bridges. (Although I would caution people about using the word "rich" to describe someone who pays $5K a month to live in a small dump of an apartment.)

Perhaps the Houston storm and all of the subsequent economic disruption is the trigger for the wave down you have expected to occur in august / September.I wonder if any insurers are having a chat with the FED about their leverage and various derivatives exposure at the moment?

Limbaugh was pushing this crap back during the NAFTA debates. "We will all be computer programmers, song writers, and millionaire radio hosts. Making things is factories is lame. Cheap plastic from China makes us all richer!"

Peter Jackson wrote:The problem with big cities like San Francisco is that they put strict limits on housing development. This is because the political power is in the hands of property owners and renters under rent control. So what you have are the "rich" who can afford houses and the homeless who sleep under bridges. (Although I would caution people about using the word "rich" to describe someone who pays $5K a month to live in a small dump of an apartment.)

@54 Grayman, If NK's launch of what (maybe?) could have been a nuke over Japan caused but a temporary hiccup on the tape, Houston too will be meaningless.

Recall the Southeast Asia Tsunami a few years ago, killed 300,000 people? You can't find it on a weekly chart of any of their stock indexes. Unless they're currently filming Sharknado 6, Shark Oil Refined in TX now, I don't think this is as big as that.

I wonder if Mr. Market won't roll over until everyone who has tried to forecast The Top capitulates in embarrassment. Only when no one can claim, "See, I told you so," will we get our apogee.

@51 keeping local food producers in business, with an eye toward future hardships is a very good reason to support farmers markets. I want local beef and dairy products around when the debt bomb goes off. For those who can and put food aside its a great way to buy bulk for well under store prices. I get free or low priced unsold produce for livestock at the end of markets. So yes, markets done correctly do help actual producers and their customers though i concede that many markets are trendy, over priced crap.... and no I dont own a butterfly necklace. Thats gay.

OT: The head counsel for UC Berkley was killed in a Hit&Run, and elements of the Cajun Navy have reportedly suffered attempted boatjacking (I'd say piracy, but ARRRR, Matie, I assume the usual suspects and they don't look much like Johnny Depp.)

I hear the NYT thinks the former crime was committed by the Trumpenator.

To a lesser extent, so are bike paths. One near my house is thirteen miles long, concrete, and ten feet wide. (Five feet is more than sufficient, even when considering two-way traffic.)

Hardly anyone uses it, and millions of $$$ were wasted. Why? Because cool.

The bike path crap usually comes from the Highway Department money spent on Park property (also using public right-of-way to connect parks with bike paths). They started out calling it an alternative to the automobile, which it is not, and nowadays they just sell it as harmless outdoor recreation. The motoring public is bullied into supporting bike paths with the false expectation that bicyclists will actually USE the bike paths and stop using city streets and sidewalks. I have seen an increasing aggressiveness and militancy from bike riders, resulting in fights with motorists and even some deaths.

I can usually separate the real city planners from the fake ones pretty quickly simply by asking what needs to be done about bicycles in cities. The fake city planners are actually social workers and see bike paths and skateboards as an extension of midnight basketball.

@58 James Dixon> Ok, ok, Not All Farmer's Markets Are Like That, yours is special.

There are lots of good ones. They're just not found in major cities.

Then they have nothing to do with what Richard Florida peddled for years, ideas that have been pushed onto Anytown's downtown revitalization program from coast to coast, funded by Federal debt but with profits going to private pockets. You know, crunchy sperging is still sperging.

Since entertainment is not the core of the economy, and in fact, may even drain money from the economy, and since it produces such dramatic wage differentials, shouldn't we tax it more, for the sake of "Social Justice"? Asking for a friend...

> Grayman, If NK's launch of what (maybe?) could have been a nuke over Japan caused but a temporary hiccup on the tape, Houston too will be meaningless.

I wouldn't be so sure, dc. While the Dow and S&P 500 have been holding up, the mid caps, small caps, and micro cap stocks all seemed to have peaked back in July and have been on a slow but relatively steady decline since. At the moment they seem to be down 5% or so. I think we're looking at an ongoing correction in the markets which simply hasn't hit the large caps yet. Now, a correction is normally something in the 10% range, and nothing to worry about. But will it stop there? Who knows.

> I hear the NYT thinks the former crime was committed by the Trumpenator.

> Then they have nothing to do with what Richard Florida peddled for years

Since they've existed my entire life, I wouldn't think so. My parents used to shop at a Farmers Market in Oakland, MD when I was a child. It may still be there for all I know. It was the best place to get fresh fruits and vegetables.

#7139 wrote:I will take his apology seriously when he jumps off the Golden Gate bridge with a couple of cinder blocks tied to his neck.

Do you think a couple of cinder blocks would be enough? I mean, he might be a good swimmer. Oh, who am I kidding? He's an academic. He gets winded tying shoe laces, although he's got the bending over thing down. That's why he only wears Birkenstock Virtue Signalers (TM), made of AGW low carbon footprint, recyclable hemp. Virtue Signalers (TM), when you care enough to show your solidarity with black, transgender, Islamic refugees in style. Not available in Red States.

VFM #7634 wrote:Virtue-signaling leftists and the superrich tend to congregate in the same deep-blue Democrat cities where you won't find a real American in sight? Who'da thunk?

He's simply in denial that the superprog cities are actual parasites on the rest of the economy that don't produce any real wealth other than financial hoodoo.

The problem isn't lack of wealth production. Its automation and a global glut of surplus labor. The shortage of well remunerated labor creates parasites since people got to eat right?

I describe it this way, every time you decide automation or computers or kiosks in the solution to paying better wages, you effectively just voted Communist

Long term, wages go up or society goes down.

Best case scenario minus better wages is permanent low fertility as we see in every European society including the religious ones like Poland

Short term thinking corporations and politicians who need people to subjugate bring in low IQ types and the complexity trap ends in a few decades anyway, C.F Detroit and longer term Houston (8% White, 80% Poor school kids) do to no one being able to maintain it

And of course its not all economics but I will say every single agnostic social democratic Scandinavian country has significantly higher native White fertility that Poland (a nation that just made Jesus its king) and on national basis or any of the Visigard states

There is an exception in the West the State of Utah but its only a single exception and its fertility level is 2.2 last seen in 1970. Its not that high

Now its plausible that long long term, the devout might replace everyone else in enough numbers but I wouldn't be certain of that.

The real good economy is the immune system, most people make real goods and there is decently remunerated work doing that , the body politic is healthy. When that stops the immune system weakens and they get parasites

No idea how that would be done though, its politically unthinkable to double wages over time, push women from the work force and to cut the work week to like 4, 8 hour days

He's simply in denial that the superprog cities are actual parasites on the rest of the economy that don't produce any real wealth other than financial hoodoo.

And this myth is popping regularly now with lefties claiming "all the money to rebuild Texas will come from California!" when even a cursory look at the numbers show that CA gets 99% of its Fed taxes back in one form or another. They really believe they are "the productive classes".

and, bizarrely, the number of gay male residents, he developed a “Bohemia Index”

The writer really thinks this is "bizarre"? Did he miss all the slobbering over "Glee" or the Hollywood worship of the oh so hip and clever queers that they invent for almost everything they make? It's accepted as gospel on the left that homos are super creative and that showtunes aren't godawful.

It is truly astounding how far this bubble is being pushed. And I agree, timing the top is a futile effort. When it blows its going to be a "rip your face off" sort of event.Its sort of like watching a tanker fire. You know its going to blow and the longer it takes the more spectacular it will be.

@72 Tipsy wrote:Since entertainment is not the core of the economy, and in fact, may even drain money from the economy, and since it produces such dramatic wage differentials, shouldn't we tax it more, for the sake of "Social Justice"? Asking for a friend...

Practically every city and town (and many counties and states) have a "Hamburger Tax" or a "Hospitality Tax" to pay into the local economic development fund. That is actually WHY the damn Chamber of Commerce is constantly pressuring local jurisdictions to do more to subsidize Tourism as part of their economic development efforts. What was originally intended (and done) was to have a trickle tax build a fund to make low or zero interest loans for start-up manufacturing in the community, which was risky enough, now the trendies see a pot of gold and they want outright subsidies for artsy businesses, in addition to property tax exemption, free parking, and look the other way on building and fire code enforcement.

It is corrupt and filthy and lends itself to all kinds of cronyism and political backscratching and vote/influence buying. It disgusts me every time I see it and they do not even bother to hide it because they see nothing wrong with it. Yes, they even dress it up as "Social Justice".

Perhaps the real mistake lies not in the tax itself but the fact that the revenues are earmarked for very narrow purposes and the political whores see this as a community pie to plunge their grimy fingers into. Once they depart from the purposes of the earmark, which were used to sell the idea to the voting public, they should be required to return to the voters for re-authorization or spin off an entirely different tax/fund for local radicals.

The Hamburger Tax (Hotel/Restaurant Tax) was popular with the voters because they did not think they would have to pay it. The tax would only be paid by tourists, traveling salesmen, and business travelers, so it was a way to export tax burden to other cities, who were doing the same thing.

@74 "In the town of Santa Clarita, the network of bike paths (called paseos), are used by thieves to avoid being caught by law inforcement."

I bring you the Springwater Corridor clean up in South eastern Portland. It took years for the home owners to get the city to evict the violent, vagabond, drug addicts living on this bike path. My small town outside of Portland has noticed a considerable rise in homeless people and petty crime since then. It is an unfortunate fact the Portland buses make it out to my town and provides the means for this meth head transfer to happen. Now a few of our bike paths have had shanty town pop up beside them. I am thankful that light rail expansion was shut down by Clackamas county voters who are well aware that it allows Portland's criminal element to commute to the suburbs for "work".http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/09/as_springwater_corridor_sweep.html

Its all fake..... Everything is so leveraged and predicated on hot air that I dont think they could get away with a series of "small quakes". My guess is they dont think so either, so go for broke.look at the derivatives market and insurance. The 100 trillion in derivatives nets to 0.... until you have a failed counter party. One failed counter party and suddenly astronomical sums are due and very few would actually be able to produce the requires sums.

I'm confused by some of the comments @78 @72 @40We have production of stuff (mining & refining raw materials, and the structure of production by which refined materials pass through intermediate stages to become finished goods, including the software that guides them) and we have EVERYTHING ELSE.

Life's necessities (food, shelter--including clothing, shoes, etc.) are increasingly being made in very, very low cost, highly automated systems. Today's necessities cost a fraction of what they did 400 years ago.

This happened when farming was automated and the percentage of people working in ag went from very high to very, very low. People moved to the factories. Now that the same thing is happening to the factories, people are moving to....What?Medical services? Higher Ed services?Entertainment? FIRE economy?

They're all services. No raw materials. No intermediate goods. The "goods" produced by the Medical-Insurance-Cartel, for instance, largely cannot be stored or accumulated; they are consumed at the moment of creation. Most of the rest is cumulative. Entertainment? Recordings just add. Each new concert, or recorded program just adds marginally to the prior glut. What is each marginal one worth?

It seems to me that the revolution under way moves work from material goods to the production of mostly intangibles. This all looks a little like entertainment to me (for example, a phenomenal number of "doctor visits" are old people for whom their trip to the Internist is actually a pleasurable social call.)

If few people are engaged in traditional production (due to automation), you have two possible paths: 1. Everyone else works in a non-traditional production mode (like entertainment, e.g., restaurants, concerts, art, TV, music, etc.)2. The monstrous Guaranteed Minimum Income, which will bring about Idiocracy at a rate 1000 times that of our current slide.

Humanity without work (purpose) won't last. It will tear down modern civilization and return mankind to prehistoric savagery, where there's no shortage of work.

If "stuff" production is automated, people will shift their values to "goods" produced and consumed at the same moment (live entertainment, good food, certain medical services, etc.), just as they shifted the assignment of value from the things available before to the things available now.

Sometimes I skim through these sorts of articles to see if there is some content at the end, but otherwise I can't stand to read this bunk stuff. The core thing is that they start with a few bogus assumptions, and everything derived from that point on is bunk.

@76 "> Then they have nothing to do with what Richard Florida peddled for years

Since they've existed my entire life, I wouldn't think so. My parents used to shop at a Farmers Market in Oakland, MD when I was a child. It may still be there for all I know. It was the best place to get fresh fruits and vegetables."

Unfortunately, I guess you could say most farmers markets are converged by the crunchy, progressive spergs. The amount of space given to artsy kitsch makers is a waste considering it comes at the expense of food producers. Many won't allow vendors to produce that isn't certified organic. Sounds great in theory but most small produce and meat farmers don't use chemicals like large agribusiness does so the restriction just make things more expensive.

Our little town built 3 or 4-story meg condos over small retail spaces for the quaint Mom & Pop stores. The retail spaces are never occupied except for brief moments. The Condos over crowd the tiny streets and everyone still needs a car! Traffic will be the downfall of Civilization. Time to get that 100 acres in South Dakota.

Starbucks is the answer. Florida was heralded because he told the moneyed classes what they wanted to hear. They despise the working class and want them destroyed. They like Starbucks and cool tech businesses. There is a lot of money and great career prospects in telling the elite what they want to hear whether it be to gut the working class or support global warming.

@76 James DixonSince they've existed my entire life, I wouldn't think so. My parents used to shop at a Farmers Market in Oakland, MD when I was a child. It may still be there for all I know. It was the best place to get fresh fruits and vegetables.

Gee! That's great! Tell us more about the good old days, Unca Granpa Boomer!

Grayman and James, it is very interesting to think about these things.

To me, I see underlying rot throughout the economy and pretty much everyone admits that most people are no better off now than in 1997. This suggests to me that markets are holding up toward the end of a huge cycle, and the normal resolution for such things is fast, not slow.

I also believe that lows (bottoms) occur amidst capitulation, so in order for this whole shootin' match to find a real low, people have to have been trained like Pavlov's Dogs to NEVER sell, never capitulate, always expect a successful bailout to arrive, courtesy of TPTB, the PPT and all the Kings Horses and all the King's Men.

If people are not now so habituated, I don't know when they will be.

I've awaited the end of this silly cycle for 22 years, and all it has done is get bigger, sillier, crazier. 2017 is as good a year for a top as was 1995, 1998, 2000, 2007 and 2010, 2011, 2015 and 2016. Any of those pauses could have been "it." But they weren't. I guess I'll know afterward, not before.

I still subscribe to the notion that the first big wave down will be financially calamitous, but the real socio-political trouble will await to the end of a recovery and another big wave down. 2020-2022 for the first, and 2034 for the second. Who knows?

I do observe that the USSR lasted about 70 years of total idiocy, and if we date the USA's "total idiocy" start to 1964, a dissolution of it about 70 years later lines up pretty well. Conjecture, nothing more.

No, kiosks in McDs are not causing communism. Communism has existed for exactly as long as leisure class intellectuals have longed for the prestige of their betters. Universities esse delendam.

Kiosks in McDs reduce the cost of fast food, which is good for the proletariat. Workers displaced will be absorbed by other concerns, like keeping shelves stocked and floors clean at CVS, keeping mini tacos on the shelf at 711, folding the towels and keeping the machines working at the gym, and all manner of activity. Maybe they will even serve as butlers to more productive people. As long as someone has food, someone else will accept that food in exchange for doing his bidding.

And now you can call me a neo-feudalist, which is somehow worse than being a UBI communist.

@76 James DixonSince they've existed my entire life, I wouldn't think so. My parents used to shop at a Farmers Market in Oakland, MD when I was a child. It may still be there for all I know. It was the best place to get fresh fruits and vegetables.

Richard Florida's error is much simpler than you all are thinking. He noticed that wealthy cities have lots of the "creative classes", and confused cause and effect, thinking that the creatives cause the wealth, instead of being drawn to the wealth.

Florida's not that bad - he does say that wealthy cities need to build more housing, though he doesn't propose any realistic solutions.

@93 TheBoomThere is a lot of money and great career prospects in telling the elite what they want to hear

Richard Florida is now saying he was wrong about the whole "revitalize downtown with globalhomoism art lofts", so what's he selling now? Does this mean that suburbia is due to be revitalized next, once Section 8 drives the prices down low enough?

Did the USSR have a generation born around the time of the Revolution who loved the Revolution and would violently resist any rejection of it? 70 years may just be a coincidence. The Boomers are our misfortune.

"Arteests" fetishize both Art and the importance of Art to Society ... but create little to nothing of actual Value.they certainly don't create Wealth

How much of modern art was money laundering before people with no taste started buying it. Moshe owes Goldstein a million for "pizza" so he buys an ugly painting off of him for the extra value.

Ferguson was >90% White in the 1980s. Look at it now

It had 2 section 8 housing complexes completed just 10 years before gentle Mike beat up the liquor store clerk

It's also bubble thinking. Easy to suggest that MOAR ART!

Yet Obama stole art funding from DC black kids for his inauguration partybloody hell that was hard to find is goggles delisting ithttps://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/washingtondc/news/press-releases/former-d.c.-government-official-sentenced-for-fraud-involving-110-000-grant-that-funded-a-2009-inaugural-ball

Not really. Its more expensive to provide services to low income groups that are on aid programs, in a rural or suburban area, than it is in a dense urban center

Its also a way of hiding the costs. When they spread out the "kindervasion" from south of the border around it was county health departments around the nation picking up the cost of on average $500k of meds for drug resistant TB

I wonder if any insurers are having a chat with the FED about their leverage and various derivatives exposure at the moment

Funny thing they only thought to release water from dams in the Houston area last night instead of at first warning.

I would caution people about using the word "rich" to describe someone who pays $5K a month to live in a small dump of an apartment.)

Interesting healthcare traveler experience the $2,000 a month parking space with an older car that can be left in an inner city hospitals parking lot in it.

Indeed, Peterson talks about this as well in some of his lectures form the physiological angle. Assuming we don't end up massively regressing due to war/famine etc, we have to find some new system to integrate an economy that inst predicated on physical labor.If you want to go all "asimov", you solve the problem by beginning a great expansion into the solar system. death toll is irrelevant when you have 7+ billion souls to spread about. It also solves the economics problem for a century or so. otherwise it would seem you need some sort of "intellectual" economy but that requires a bifurcation of the human species as the only major population groups that re likely to move into that successfully, even if painfully would be east asians and western whites. just casual speculation.

My wife and I pioneered by buying a house, and then a townhouse, in the Eola Heights neighborhood in Orlando during the 80s and 90s. It went, from being a collection of old big houses cut into apartments and rooming houses, to one of the most desireable and high priced residential neighborhoods in town. My main reason for moving there was that I hated the drive to work. Downtown I could walk to work, although if I had a jury trial that went late, it was a bit spooky walking thru the deserted downtown until I got back into the neighborhood. As to gays, they make pretty good neighbors. Double incomes, no kids, plenty of money to spend on their homes. Of course, back then they were in the closet most of the time. Prancing down the street in a feathered headdress with a banana protruding behind was limited to their parade at Lake Eola park once a year. I find it hard to regret the gentrification process. It was a good place to live, and we made good money selling our properties. Moreover, I don't see how the poor were any better off living in a rooming house downtown than they are living in a trailer park or 60s cbs house in the close-in suburbs now. This whole issue just looks to me like sour grapes by people who were too stupid to get in on the ground floor of a good thing.

I used to go into Chicago in the 90's and remember going by Cabrini-Green . One of the things I thought at the time was that it was prime real estate, only blocks from the gold coast, and someone was going to grab it.

Sure enough, they ended up razing the projects, relocated the residents to towns in Il, Wi, and IA, and are building stores and condos now.

"...bizarrely, the number of gay male residents, he developed a “Bohemia Index” to calculate this group’s magical effect on urban economic growth..."

He may be committing a validity error here by confusing gentrification with economic growth. Gentrification is often spawned by the gay-male community in these "progressive-tolerant" communities because two gay guys living together and pooling their resources, you know, have more resources.

There may be many problems plaguing the United States, and certainly mass immigration from the 3rd world is one of them. But at the very core, our Nation has paid an UNBELIEVABLE price having blacks/african-americans, descendants of slaves--whatever you want to call them.

Other groups present cultural, social, environmental, legal and economic problems,sure enough, but to think roughly 12 percent of the American population has basically brought our nations' schools, playgrounds, cities, (now) suburbs, movie theaters, malls, health care, etc etc, to it's knees, is a testament to how much IQ matters.

Blacks, black people, black communities, black mothers, black "fathers", black boys, teens, blacks in public schools, black admissions to colleges, swimming pools, black culture--black issues, and the white cucks it brings with them, are taxing this country to death in every way possible. It is like a virus the enemy injected us with (except it's NOT), and it will literally destroy this nation from within.

I've speculated that China, Russia and maybe even India, will beat us to Mars--at least as far as colonizing, simply because we have an internal cancer that is eating away at every aspect of our nation's fabric, from academia to the literal costs/burdens placed upon all the innovators and creators (white, sometimes Asian or Indian) who are born in the United States. It is a YOKE that we cannot seem to get out from under.

The removal of statues is really a great metaphor for what black "culture" (and the whites that support it, knowingly or not) is doing to our nation. They are walking us backwards, erasing our accomplishments and bringing US down.

The notion that "artists", most of whom are simply upper middle class loungers with little talent, are creative in an economic sense is absurd. Even real artists don't create anything of economic value, but are simply a way for the wealthy to virtue signal.

@106 Yes, Gentrification is not economic progress. It is simply a way of expelling minorities from neighborhoods that can be turned into profitable real estate. The minorities go somewhere else and de-gentrify that neighborhood, lol....We saw a great deal of this in the Chicago area over the last 50 years.

"How much of modern art was money laundering before people with no taste started buying it. Moshe owes Goldstein a million for..."

Tax break stuff also. Give it to a museum at a vastly pumped up appraisal.

"the number of gay male residents, he developed a “Bohemia Index” to calculate this group’s magical effect on urban economic growth..."

Somebody actually believes this stuff.

There is a benefit to ambiance and reputation, but it is back burner stuff. For a healthy economy the need is for people that bring in money from outside the area. Pension fund stuff work if the money comes in from somewhere else. Rich people work if the money they spend locally is derived from somewhere else. And of course any kind of business entity that sells its products abroad.

Unless a local has a special draw, tourism is a crap industry. I think they push it because it makes for nice ambiance locally. Thus the artistic types, government funded people, and the chattering classes generally exaggerate its benefits.

these "progressive-tolerant" communities because two gay guys living together and pooling their resources, you know, have more resources

Also before everygaycouple started adopting non verbal special needs niglet boys none cared about the quality of schools. The only gays I know that adopted a girl other than on "Modern Family" adopted the niece of one of them.

Black costs.. It is like a virus the enemy injected us with (except it's NOT)

Jews owned the slave boats, ran the auctions, and profit from current "refugee resettlement"

BBGKB wrote:these "progressive-tolerant" communities because two gay guys living together and pooling their resources, you know, have more resources

People who don't have kids have more money, and I suspect some of that extra is spent on political contributions. I suspect that is why they pander to these types. The middle income people with a few kids don't have the bucks or the time to do much in the political arena.

GraniteChin wrote:Blacks, black people, black communities, black mothers, black "fathers", black boys, teens, blacks in public schools, black admissions to colleges, swimming pools, black culture--black issues, and the white cucks it brings with them, are taxing this country to death in every way possible. ... It is a YOKE that we cannot seem to get out from under.

One hundred years ago, the yoke was far less burdensome. I wonder what has changed between then and now? How is it that our ancestors were able to control the savage hordes, and we cannot?

Whatever you might blame it on, whatever the difference actually is, the difference is not only destroying our White nation, but also destroying our Black parasites.

Several factors. 100 yrs ago the economy was labor based and low tech. Minorities of low average IQ could function in those economies. In modern economies they are virtually shutout except for the "affirmative action" quotas. As it stands 1/2 of the black population in the US in functionally unable to participate in the modern economy from an IQ perspective and about 30% to 40% of hispanics are in the same boat.

Indeed, Peterson talks about this as well in some of his lectures form the physiological angle. Assuming we don't end up massively regressing due to war/famine etc, we have to find some new system to integrate an economy that inst predicated on physical labor.

If you want to go all "asimov", you solve the problem by beginning a great expansion into the solar system. death toll is irrelevant when you have 7+ billion souls to spread about. It also solves the economics problem for a century or so. otherwise it would seem you need some sort of "intellectual" economy but that requires a bifurcation of the human species as the only major population groups that re likely to move into that successfully, even if painfully would be east asians and western whites. just casual speculation.

Frankly given the cost and time constraints , a worse automation crisis than is already extant will arrive long before anyone could get quality people into space or have a significant space colony other than a research base or something

The paradox of space, if you are rich and developed enough to do colonize space , you will neither need or want to do this.

China isn't going to do it, they'll be too old at current trends, Japan, nope Europe isn't going to do, they are too old (median age in German even with immigration is 47!) and the US is not populated by enough people with the Right Stuff to do it. The later can be changed but its not on the menu

Optionally we could simply realize that with a total fertility rate in the developed world is going to be at most at replacement and not worry about it . Its expected and normal

The moonshot and the baby boom which are tied at the hip in complex and interesting ways has left us with notions that I am fairly sure are not correct

Space colonies are not feasible and fundamentally the Baby Boom was a bubble.

The fertility rate dropped in the 30's from economic reasons, was artificially raised do to overwhelming prosperity and very high wages for a few decades and than dropped to what I would expect from an 80% urban population with high population density and a labor surplus

This is not a problem if the US can grow up and stop pretending that our frontier mentality makes a lick of sense any more. The world is full, almost entirely explored and anywhere worth living is settled

we need to deal with reality

There are a couple of caveats to space

Negative Mass has been theorized by Dr. Robert Forward as allowing a reactionless drive and apparently WSU in Washington may have created something like that, if either that or the EM/Cannae drives pan out, this is a game changer. If that is, somehow the society can be to made to work.

This won't be easy though, it would be incredibly costly and as societies we can barely manage running water

An authoritarian Right Wing dictatorship could do it and might even manage a small colony if such a state could be sustained for half a century or so and it could developed trillions in surplus wealth somehow

Not very likely

There are no habitable worlds that we know of anyway and of the ones that might be , none of them that would take less time than the life cycle of a civilization to reach.

Kiosks in McDs reduce the cost of fast food, which is good for the proletariat. Workers displaced will be absorbed by other concerns, like keeping shelves stocked and floors clean at CVS, keeping mini tacos on the shelf at 711, folding the towels and keeping the machines working at the gym, and all manner of activity. Maybe they will even serve as butlers to more productive people. As long as someone has food, someone else will accept that food in exchange for doing his bidding.

automation leverages human inputs, as such the number of humans needed in the menial class of roles you describe rapidly drops below the number of people to fill them. large groups of idle people are dangerous to any society, even more so in "diverse" societies.

Any UBI scheme is likely to end up right back where we are now at best. The higher IQ ranges will out-compete the lower effectively negating the intended purpose of UBI. Income is relative to your social strata once you are above the point of starvation.

Cities usually make good money off sports stadiums, though. But still, entertainment will always be 2nd tier economy that caters to an already established infrastructure. Destroy the infrastructure, and you get magic little floating bubble economies.

I never said anyone would survive the attempt ;) but it would be busy work that kept societies going for a while. And realistically if you are willing to accept high fatality rates we are probably well capable of mucking about in the inner solar system, without hypothetical propulsion.It wouldn't be about building some asimovian empire. Even complete failure would generate substantial knowledge, from medical to engineering. But to your point the intelligence and social trait profiles do limit it to mostly east asian and western whites.You still run into the need for bifurcation of the species unless you plan on busting out crispr and engineering blacks south asians and hispanics.

Jill wrote:Cities usually make good money off sports stadiums, though.

But, the light-in-the-loafers "artistic" gentrifiers aren't noted for their support of sports franchises. Plus, it is mostly the White males/families from the suburbs that are the ones with the disposable income that drive into the city and buy player jerseys, beer, hot dogs, and spend hundreds of dollars on tickets.

I was recently accidentally watching the movie Singles, directed and written by Cameron Crowe, who we can presume is a lefty based on the simple fact that he is a Hollywood writer-director. (And was a rock music journalist, to boot.) Funny enough, one of the characters (played by George C. Scott's son) works as a traffic analyst in Seattle, or some crap. He had the Big Idea to save all the city's problems with a mass transit boondoggle.

Which isn't intended to just be people riding on a train. Oh, no. It's a holistic hipster vision of community and togetherness, thriving and leading fulfilling lives with your fellow citizens, or whatever. You know, basically nonsense.

He gets a lunch with the mayor to pitch his idea. The mayor is skeptical, because voters like their cars. The main character gets all tongue-tied, and the Big Idea comes out like, "Yeah, but if we give them coffee...and music..."

That's the essence of all these sorts of Big Ideas for reawakening cities. Same tired, old city, but now with Coffee and Music! Presto-chango, instant tax revenue!

So if Starbucks isn't the answer,And if Stardrive isn't the answer imagine a full-scale chimpout inside a colony-sized spaceship...),

All roads lead back to one of a very short list:1. Eugenics big-time.2. Engineered humans (Not for a VERY long time, even in Beijing.)3. Morlock/Eloi bifurcation (Takes a long time and above all, separation.)4. A complete inversion of demographic trends, which need not mean Euro/Anglo's starting having 10-kid families, only that the rest of everyone else ceases the >2.1 replacement rate. This could come from a change in fashion (choice), but seems much more likely to be pulled by the Four Horsemen.

For 50 years the dominant religion in the West rejected observable reality in favor of feelz-good virtue-fantasies. People promoted a host of Mr. Floridas in order to make a Utopian society of equally happy people. Desperation today comes as their blinders can no longer hide the perfect record of their failure; people are angrier now than ever, or certainly look predisposed to be so.

Love it or hate it, the future will see a return to the notions about race, ethnicity and causes-of-poverty our ancestors shared a century ago.

I think the "idle hands" issue presents the biggest problem in the long run. Low-skill jobs are being automated out of existence...or taxed/minimum waged into oblivion.

I see two possible solutions. The first would be to encourage, through the loosening of taxes and regulation, the hiring of low-skill people as personal assistants for the highly skilled. Secretaries, butlers, drivers, errand-runners. Heinlein's "Universal Services" company could make a fortune these days. Smart people can use a less smart person to handle simple tasks - which leaves the smart person free to do the things that only he can do.

The drawback being that personal services relies on a high-trust society. Making this work would require a willingness to inflict severe punishments (caning and/or death) for robbing an employer.

The other is to make contraception a requirement to receive welfare. Drain the left end of the bell curve out of the gene pool.

A Most Deplorable Paradigm Is More Than Twenty Cents wrote:LOL, no! Sports stadiums are sinkholes that require subsidies to build and moar subsidies to operate. That's another "revitalization" myth. Maybe Yankee Stadium is the exception, I don't know and don't care.The Kingdome had to be pulled down, because it was finally paid off.

tublecane wrote:Funny enough, one of the characters (played by George C. Scott's son) works as a traffic analyst in Seattle, or some crap. He had the Big Idea to save all the city's problems with a mass transit boondoggle.Seattle used to be a nice place, until the Blacks moved in, the homos took control and the relentlessly Leftie Yankee mindset took over.All the decent people moved out to Bellevue, Burien, and Snohomish county.

I think you're right. I said that off the cuff, mostly based off the traffic of people who attend Vs theaters and art galleries. However, if a stadium is publically funded, a great deal of the money may not even make it back the community that supported it, except in isolated cases. Also, unless it's a big game, it's going to be locals who are watching the games and double spending, so to speak.

Somewhat relevant, but on local radio (SW Ontario Canada), we heard of another $300 million or so being dedicated to solving the 'opiate addiction crisis!'.

Yes, big problem. But what is an opportunity to address the causes of downward despair into extreme drug addiction (terrible economic prospects, spiteful culture, hijacked agendas etc), we are told tax money will support the treatment industry/lobby.

@144-The "treatment industry" is of course psychiatry, social work, and drug companies themselves getting make-work on pure bluff and pretend-expertise. In fact, it's one of the primary excuses for the power of one of Western Civilization's biggest long-cons: psychology. (The other excuses being suicide and criminal justice. It's all wrapped up in things like child-rearing and general health issues [including everything down to feeling kinda blue], too, but those aren't strengths of the con so much as consequences of being conned.)

@139 JillI think you're right. I said that off the cuff, mostly based off the traffic of people who attend Vs theaters and art galleries. However, if a stadium is publically funded, a great deal of the money may not even make it back the community that supported it, except in isolated cases.

Public debt / costs, private profits. That's the foundation of most "revitalization".

DonReynolds wrote:Feudalism is merely the political adaptation to rural life, where social hierarchy is determined by land ownership and those people who have no land necessarily become serfs.

What you are describing is not feudalism but a peasant culture. It varied place to place, but in its most complete implementation the surf was owned by the lord who would typically be a land owner.

Explaining it by way of example, it happened that a knight killed a surf. The owner of the surf, another knight, sued the knight who killed the surf for loss of an asset. The case went to court (the dukes court, no separate judiciary), and the knight who killed the surf had to pay up. It was a civil matter. Loss of value.

What is unclear to me is how a surf differed from a slave in that in that both were property. Apparently custom dictated that the surf be treated better, and they had the privilege of being a member of their community, raising families, and so on.

The globalists want to turn the US into a third world economy: The only people earning real GDP are miners/extractors, farmers, and transport operators. Everyone else lives of of them second hand.

Entirely true.

if you want to see why the economy is FUBAR watch "How its made" or one of the shows like that and look at a modern factory. Than go look at a 1050's factory and compare the number of workers

Hell take a guess at how many jobs Craigslist cots vs how much it created (Craigslist obliterated newspaper classified ads, replacing them with 35 jobs . Yes 35)

Another example, the E-Book and music industries . The changes are great for artists (the creative class the author is on about) but they've nuked so many middlemen its not funny

However all this automation still costs money and the economic decline and social change has also lowered the birth rate. This means no more people to exploit.

So the solution is bring in 3rd worlders or to shift production overseas to save a few bucks.

The net result to quote Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash

When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:musicmoviesmicrocode (software)high-speed pizza delivery

problem is we don't do those things better than anyone else. Music and movies suck, our software is not better than anyone else's and pizza delivery is moot. It also being automated

My personal opinion is because the greed and corruption level is so high and the option of a nationalist/regulated economy with welfare state is too traumatic the Economic Liberals and Neo Cons and Libertarian types will never change course

This means we'll just end up with a catabolic collapse over decades,

This will end the complexity problem for many decades since the tech that makes it all possible will be too hard to make after a collapse

Brick Hardslab wrote:It was the 1970's to 80's. I was there. Before that Seattle was not conservative by any means, it was a city. But it was safe and very polite.

I lived in Seattle for a while and like it, as did a lot of people I knew who lived there. But the place wasn't for everybody. Summer days were usually warm in the middle of the day, and winter days warm enough that the snow would not last, but the sun was seldom visible and there seemed always to be a storm brewing off to the west. No shortage of rain.

Big corps have been ditching dumb people for years. Back in the late 80's I worked for a bank as a software developer (doing what was at the time cutting edge programming with C, SQL, and UNIX to handle processing options and currency trading). They had retarded people wheel around the mail cart to deliver mail to everyone's desk, including interoffice mail -- which was a big deal before email and word processing. Some jerk executive figured it was cheaper to replace them with robots - which was done. A robot would track around the floor stopping every 20 feet to beep at everyone to get their mail and drop it off. When it was done on a floor it would patiently wait at the service elevator for one person to get it and take it to the next floor. A few robots replaced 30 or 40 retarded people who then presumably went on welfare.

We can expect this trend to continue until half or more of the population is unemployed and unemployable. (Note: we only need 3% of the number of people today to work in agriculture compared to 100 years ago. Don't think the trend will stop.)

From what I have seen and guessing about it to an extent, I suspect that people with IQ's down to around 85 can still be useful citizens without special help. But the environment has to be benign and they have to not have other personality issues. Combine stupid with difficult and generally they are somebody you don't want to have around unless there is some special effort to accommodate.

@156-For one thing, I think serfs were tied to the land. They weren't chattel, like slaves. You couldn't move them around or buy and sell them separate from your land. If you moved, the serf stayed put. If you sold or transferred your land, they went with it.

dc.sunsets August 29, 2017 2:08 PMRecall the Southeast Asia Tsunami a few years ago, killed 300,000 people? You can't find it on a weekly chart of any of their stock indexes.

There was just about absolutely zero effect on the world economy from those 300,000+ who died in the tsunami. In the words from the movie Falling Down, "They were no economically viable." Nobody, no government know who they were or where they lived, they're recorded in no official databases, it's as if they never existed in the first place. A few hundred thousand less died on 9/11 and the world's economy hiccuped for 2 years.

As for farmer's market's, there's quite a few in my local area. With local farmers and local produce. I rarely go to them. But then, Depending on which route I decide to drive, I know which roadside farmstands have the best corn and which the best cauliflower, and fruits and berries in season. And Amish baked goods... Farmstand prices and freshness are (usually) better then farmer's markets prices and freshness.

@128 Jill:Cities usually make good money off sports stadiums, though.No, not really:1. It is ridiculous for an indebted state to give millions of dollars to a billionaire.2. The new stadium will not boost the state's economy in the slightest3. The new stadium will not save any jobs or maintain the tax base in any significant manner4. It is not fair for non-NFL fans to subsidize the entertainment preferences of others5. The stadium will cost more than is estimated and the state will be saddled with the cost overrunsOverall it's a net negative, the only reason cities build new stadiums/arenas is because pro sports franchises have a gun to their head - ''Build us that fancy new stadium, or we'll pack up and leave for one that will!''.Plenty of examples, all across the US.

Along with Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida has served as an inspiration for mayors

Whoa. Hold on a sec there, don't go conflating Jane Jacobs with Richard Florida. Florida is a glib idiot who believes stupid stuff about hipster urbanites. Jacobs was just someone who didn't want totalitarian lunkheads like Robert Moses going around rototiling functional neighborhoods to put up Stalinist redevelopment projects.

As far as cities go, there are two fundamental problems. One, they attract people with limited time preference horizons. If you want to engage in shameful vices, you either do it out in the woods where nobody can see (but then, hard to feed yourself out in the woods) or else in the middle of so many people, nobody is going to notice or care or be able to confidently pick you out of a lineup. The last place you want to engage in behavior you don't want to be held accountable for is in a small town with enough people that someone will see, but not so many that nobody will care. The other sort of low-time-preference person attracted to a city are people who aren't interested in kids. No sane person wants to raise kids in a big city, so who you have are wold-oats sowing youts, gays who scornfully call people with kids "breeders", and SMV failures bitter at the world. None of them think too much about the future.

Two, cities are hideously expensive. It costs a lot to supply a dense city with food, water and sanitation. The people living there have to be far more productive than the same people living in a small town or village to pay for the infrastructure. But because of problem #1, that's hard to manage...

I've read the posts in this thread that mentioned Chicago with great interest, for I am from Chicago.

Everything said in those posts is true.

I'll just add some related points:Gentrification has been going on in Chicago for at least the past 25 years. And it is not an accident that during that time Chicago had white Democratic mayors.There are two types of liberalism going on in Chicago: San Francisco style liberalism, and Detroit style liberalism. Some neighborhoods in Chicago are like San Francisco: white, affluent, have diversity of lifestyles, have bars, restaurants, coffeehouses, etc. Other neighborhoods though are not much better than Detroit.Chicago has been in a population decline for years. Newspaper articles gives facts about the population decline after the year 2000. However, if my memory is correct, the population has been declining since at least the 1980s. Both blacks and whites are leaving the city.

Considering City Journal debunked Richard Florida and "Creative Cities" in 2004, using empirical data of economic growth and other metrics between cities which drank the Kool-aid and those that didn't, it is only surprising that it took a bit more than a decade afterwards to admit he was wrong.

The really remarkable thing is he actually was man enough to say he was wrong, although I doubt he will express regret at the massive amounts of time and taxpayer resources wasted by his "work".

The more I read people about things like this, the more i think Pol Pot had a good point.

In any case OB C.S. Lewis

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

@171-The main problem with people like Jane Jacobs is that they focus on what they think are important little things which ultimately turn out to be trivial. Like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

It'd be better if cities weren't oppressively ugly, but discivilizational people aren't a symptom of living in modernist nightmares. The people themselves and the larger culture are the problem. There's a reason her book was a favorite of neoconservatives. A group which basically was the liberal establishment that got outflanked on the left, and said, "You don't know what you're doing. Here, let the adults take back over." Nothing radical, just a moderately more mature way of pushing the same ideas forward.

"Thought leaders" like Florida represent an advance in honesty, if not anything else. Because the elites long ago revolted (in the terminology of Christopher Lasch). The idea stopped being to set just the right environment (magic dirt), and started being "screw the proles; let's import better people." But they didn't really get better people, just smarter people with higher salaries. These people were degenerate, not able to build lasting communities, and unsupportive of civilization.

I don't believe, by the way, that either of them had much of a real impact on the way cities are run. Like a poster said above, they managed to articulate what this e on charge wanted to do anyway. Jacobs represented a shift, toward a faction of the ruling class that had been losing power for a while. Florida represents what was very recently already ascendent. That's the main difference between their impact, I suppose.

Neither of them are even Keynes, who definitely represented what politicians already wanted to do. But he summed up the new way of doing economics so perfectly, and slammed the door shut on the previous way so definitively, that he personifies the switch. These people, Jacobs and Florida, attained no such status.

They were more influential than most people ever get to be, admittedly. I just don't like the instinct to personify large-scale shifts in opinion like this. It's not even the real story with people like Keynes, but at least with him it's arguable. It's not arguable in my opinion that we live in Richard Florida's world.

@172-About the gentrification thing, Steve Sailer has made the point that in the near future the left, True Believers in magic dirt, will realize that blacks had all this time been living on some of the most magical property in the world. What were very recently described as dead-end hellholes in which generations of blacks were doomed to suffer and die, may become hipster paradises. (Can you pluralize "paradise?")

Soon, it the whole black real estate saga will be told as a tragedy. (Or a different kind of tragedy,since it was always thought of as tragic.) They came north, they settled on sacred ground. They had it all! Then it was ripped away from them.

Actually, it sucked when they had it because they suck at modern Western Civilization, and they'll suck wherever they go. No real estate paradise for them.

Then again, they were able to build communities at some point. Or at least better ones. Until the civil rights movement effed it up.

The main problem with people like Jane Jacobs is that they focus on what they think are important little things...

I disagree about Jacobs. Her main point was something Taleb would agree with - granularity. She is mostly known for opposition to Moses-ite large-scale redevelopment where existing neighborhoods were bull-dozed and replaced with something that would fit in Stalin's Russia (I've spent a lot of time in Minsk, where there's the best preserved instance of this sort of architecture). Jacobs was the anti-planner, opposed to City Hall selling development permits to crony bidders.

@177-All those things are bad, and going the other way is better. Modernist architecture and city planning is oppressive and soul-sucking. So I probably shouldn't write the concerns off as trivial.

But if you get rid of Stalinism you don't necessarily get happy, functional civilization. Because you're still left with degenerate population. Unplanned cities don't cure sick souls and sick societies.

But if you get rid of Stalinism you don't necessarily get happy, functional civilization. Because you're still left with degenerate population. Unplanned cities don't cure sick souls and sick societies.

No, they don't. Cities are inherently dysfunctional, as hopefully my earlier post described. What I see in Jacob's work was an attempt to keep something of the smaller scale to neighboroods. I think the dysfunction of cities comes from the scale, the ability to lose oneselft amid the multitudes. Jacobs wasn't explicitly against that sort of scale, but she was... perhaps inately... in favor of the smaller scale neighborhood that preserved some of the social cohesion of the village.

At any rate, I see Jacobs as someone who saw cities as federations of communities. Her antagonist was Robert Moses, who saw cities as blank slates to be arranged according to whims.

Did you read Robert A. Caro's Power Broker? I dabbled, because it's a giant book. But what I read I found fascinating. He was a Prince of Progressivism, and therefore monstrous.

About realignment and new alliances: yes, I agree. Because you really hit on something with scale. Scale is at the heart of the right/left divide. If social units were on a smaller scale, say politically divided community by community, I wouldn't mind if there was a totalitarian communist dictatorship next door. (So long as I was prepared to defend myself.) They could have their society (and fail). I could have mine, and hopefully prosper. That's rightism.

One of the reasons I don't call myself a nationalist is because I think the modern nation-state is too big. I'm all for national self-determination of various ethnicities, but not everyone who happens to share an ethnicity has to live in the same state. That was one of Nazism's great mistakes. The English people got by fine, fora long time, running a slew of separate states.

I know, I know, nationalism is not about states, persay. But look up what it means to be a "nationalist" in the dictionary, and the first thing it'll mention is politics. Pushing for political independence for a people, that's how the term will be defined. Because that's its primary association.

Of course, nationalism goes beyond that. A nation could be split up among different polities and still be a nation. I'm just talking about political labels I attach to myself.

Anywho, there's an epidemic of gigantism among an array of ideologies. Maybe it goes all the way back to the beginning of the Enlightenment. I'm still figuring that out. But intellectually, Westerners are always expanding out, out, out. Further and further, colonizing everything. And usually though not uniformly sliding to the left, which itself is expansive and more importantly centralizing. That's the definition I use to identify the left, which I borrowed from Bertrand de Jouvenel.

Libertarians come in various flavors, but the currently ascendant variety is one-worldist. They sound decentralist, and they would be if they were only running an isolated community. But their vision is for all the world to be libertarian and have the same policies. That's leftist.

Most libertarians I can agree with a long way, and I sympathize and share common intellectual roots with them. (Rothbard is a big part of my thinking, as are Nock, Mencken, and others.) But very quickly they turn into what may as well be members of the international communist conspiracy.

This is all very tricky, because the political spectrum I think is fundamentally bogus and false reductionism. But politics is always gang warfare, Us against Them, and the gangs that form don't do so arbitrarily. There are patterns.

One thing I know: I am opposed to the current Establishment. Therefore, probably anything within acceptable opinion is my enemy. That includes libertarianism, mainstream conservatism, and neoconservatism.

Any group opposed to gigantism and one-worldism can be my ally. That may include groups thought of as leftists. But I have to be careful, here. Just because a group is outside the mainstream or even opposed to large-scale, centralizing politics, doesn't mean they're my friends.

"As far as cities go, there are two fundamental problems. One, they attract people with limited time preference horizons. If you want to engage in shameful vices, you either do it out in the woods where nobody can see (but then, hard to feed yourself out in the woods) or else in the middle of so many people, nobody is going to notice or care or be able to confidently pick you out of a lineup. The last place you want to engage in behavior you don't want to be held accountable for is in a small town with enough people that someone will see, but not so many that nobody will care. The other sort of low-time-preference person attracted to a city are people who aren't interested in kids. No sane person wants to raise kids in a big city, so who you have are wold-oats sowing youts, gays who scornfully call people with kids "breeders", and SMV failures bitter at the world. None of them think too much about the future.

"Two, cities are hideously expensive. It costs a lot to supply a dense city with food, water and sanitation. The people living there have to be far more productive than the same people living in a small town or village to pay for the infrastructure. But because of problem #1, that's hard to manage..."

@32 The other downside is the relocated denizens shatter existing communities and break down societal trust in previously functioning small towns/ suburbs.

Watching with horror as Houston is wiped from the map (have friends down there); I read this and thought: SEE? Even GOD wants to drive the "nonproductive" away -- how many 'Houstonians' only became such after fleeing Katrina and NOLO?

(CBSNews: "Houston reportedly welcomed as many as a quarter million Katrina evacuees, and the city estimates 40,000 never moved back..." MSN: " Houston was nicknamed "New Orleans West" after taking in so many Katrina ..."

I'd ask what next: a plague of locusts? But it's an Ice Age... and the loss of massive amounts of agricultural land... No more breadbasket!

@33 I have never once seen a stand providing fresh produce or small farm meat products there.

Between the easier 'online' connection with putative high-end-meat purchasers, selling 'shares' -- specific, regular deliveries to specific customers, and cost- and time-sink that is TRYING to prepare, pack up, go to, spend a day at, and then pack up and ho home with leftovers -- it's just nothing small farms can do in most places. (My sister in NYC has a huge farmer's market -- but it's a lot of 'aggregators' who buy from multiple small farms and set-up mini 'stores' in the city; and lots of (rich) folks can come shop because it's a city! Makes it worthwhile for both the farmers and the aggregators.)

Closer out to the small farmers, there are small butchers and 'grocery' stores that often will handle (be the outlet for) the small high-end farmers.

@55 denizens move to smaller towns and cities in the middle of nowhere.The Antarctic is available.

No no! AFRICA is available! Why destroy the beauty that is the frozen Antipodes! (Besides, isn't Atlantis buried under there? {BG}) (And the aliens with their bases? And the hideouts for our PTB?)

Move the african plains fauna HERE (there was actually a project considering bringing the lions and tigers and bea ... er ... elephants HERE and lettin' them loose in the mid-West! (Somehow, I think the wheat farmers were objecting!) (Dunno what we'd do with the primates though... maybe South America?)

Australia actually IS providing *White flight*: they are tranking and flying White rhinos out of Africa to Oz to keep them from becoming 'bush meat' for vermin!

@87 It seems to me that the revolution under way moves work from material goods to the production of mostly intangibles.

I read somewhere long long ago (and I'm explaining it badly,sorry), an idea that there are these huge 'disruptions' that fundamentally change the basis of how (now, mostly Western?) society works. And the disruptions dislocate and harm huge numbers of folks. The first was hunt-and-gather to agriculture. The next (better recorded) was agriculture to industry (Industrial Revolution: making things mostly for others). This, the current one, is industrial to "service" (doing things for others) -- because "we" don't make lots of things anymore. And this is what puts huge numbers of e.g., factory workers out of work.

And automation is likely to keep nibbling (and eventually wholesale ripping) away at making things. And lots of folks who WERE able to make things will NOT be able to make or 'service' the automation devices. And lots of folks get left behind with each fundamental disruption.

Richard Florida wrote that you didn't need a police department that worked, you didn't need roads in good repair and you didn't need good teachers in safe schools. The creative class was just parsley on that steak of civic mismanagement and civic neglect.

His friend, Professor Putnam, made life dangerous for poor or old people by insisting that the way to grow community was mailboxes for an entire street in one box, so that everyone was required to leave their house to go to the mailbox. Also, packages were delivered to said mailbox. Normal, older, poor people wishing to live out their remaining days in now-declining cities, were set upon by thieves as they wobbled their way to the mailbox to obtain their Social Security checks, their pension checks, and so on. As well, packages would not make it safely to inside their homes.

I don't recommend any delivery service to anyone, without asking about the state of their neighborhood. I was a young mother in a failing neighborhood in a city gone Florida. I was nearly housebound, surrounded by criminals renting Section 8 housing. We moved.

I can receive packages safely. This does more to stop those potholes- patched, filled- than any creative class theory. The neighborhood relies on delivery trucks, which have immensely efficient routes: one driver delivers to 20+ houses, versus 20 houses make 40+ trips in their own cars.

The school teaches, the kids are disciplined, the police do not need to be a policing everyone from age 4 upwards. Mostly because this is a very family- centered, traditional neighborhood. No one uses bad language, even.

There is blood on those men's hands. Not just foolishly wasted municipal tax dollars: blood.

@107 we have an internal cancer that is eating away at every aspect of our nation's fabric,

And we keep FEEDING that cancer, AND importing into the 'body' ever more different kinds and sources of MORE cancer!

This is why (in my hostile view, certainly) 'we' need to keep pushing to awaken to the WEAPON being used against us in the sleeping 'patients' who recoil when the word "cancer" (i.e., negro, nigger, black, african, diversity, "yout's", BLM, black bloc, etc. etc.) gets used! BECOME the turd in the punch bowl -- don't let your friends and neighbors stay asleep. (Maybe don't start out at WORK trying to awaken the sleepers, you need to keep your job!)

I've managed to get several of my neighbors to both notice -- and SAY they notice! (One has even started using the word negro in our conversations! BRAVO!) I am trying in my little circle, to make 'racism' acceptable. And not just acceptable to notice but WORTH 'noticing' out loud! And, alas, as our county gets darker and darker (dammnit!), it's necessary!

@176 Then again, they were able to build communities at some point. Or at least better ones. Until the civil rights movement effed it up.

Nah, they weren't "able to build" communities (and never HAVE been!) -- they had no choice but to LIVE in (to *act as if* they belonged in) successful (non-tribal) communities. If the Whites around them had not enforced -- and forced -- behaviors similar to White behaviors that make for successful lower-middle-class communities, the blacks would have -- as they HAVE -- regressed to their natures: the way(s) blacks live in EVERY place they live! ("Where there are africans, there is africa." Do you not see this EVERYwhere on the planet?! Very, very small exceptions not withstanding.)

The civil rights era did not "eff up" the black communities; the civil rights movements LIFTED the heavy hand of White "behave or else" controls (by force) and allowed blacks to return to their normal-for-them way(s) of living (as is evident across the globe).

As long as folks keep thinking that "somehow" WHITES "caused" blacks and their "communities" to fall all-to-hell, "we" will not be correctly identifying the problem; and correctly identifying the problem is 90% of solving it! It is not that somehow Whites destroyed apparently successful lower-middle-class black communities; with successful black-focused law, money, hair-and-makeup, schooling, doctors and hospitals, bakeries, grocers, etc. etc. businesses.

It's that by Whites STOPPING their (our) (often necessarily violent) repression of the natural criminal tendencies of the majority of blacks; added to the inability (lack of willingness?) of the successful blacks to control their racial kin; that led to the massive crime and destruction of those "apparently successful" black communities.

UNTIL we start pointing that out, and trying to change things to accord with those *realities* -- and that absolutely includes necessarily violent repression and punishment -- there will be no chance for "successful lower-middle-class black communities. They must be segregated AND kept under tight (violent) control to force them to *act as if* they want (or know how) to live in White-seeming communities.

(And, that includes kicking the upper-middle class blacks back to their communities own as well. They can no longer have the 'pressure-relief valve' of moving away from their racial kin and moving INTO White neighborhoods. We don't want them. They destroy (as they have ALWAYS destroyed) property values, community cohesion, good schools and stores, high trust and high performance, and everything that MAKES White communities where they want to escape to. That must no longer be allowed.)

Jack Amok wrote:No, they don't. Cities are inherently dysfunctional, as hopefully my earlier post described. What I see in Jacob's work was an attempt to keep something of the smaller scale to neighboroods. I think the dysfunction of cities comes from the scale, the ability to lose oneselft amid the multitudes. Jacobs wasn't explicitly against that sort of scale, but she was... perhaps inately... in favor of the smaller scale neighborhood that preserved some of the social cohesion of the village.

I don't disagree with your premise but you can't have a contradictory policy, if you reduce scale for the health of society, you can't have population growth either

Sprawl isn't better than urbanization and on this count some of the Left are correct, suburbs are quite alienating

What you have to have is small, fairly static communities some urban with acceptable to that levels of homogeneity and space between them.

This policy is incompatible with any kind of global capitalism and a lot of what we call "free' markets

Also the tacit assumption that all land is the same has to go. There are excellent reasons parts of this country are lightly populated , decent climate and water are in short supply in some places.

Any kind of of policy that assumes people will just move to Wyoming and bump out babies so the "nation" can have a large population is risible.

People just don't have kids if they don't want them . Baring collapse, birth control isn't going to go anywhere. Assuming a policy of stability isn't bad and a 20% increase in the White TFR is totally doable for the US/UK/Scandinavia, Australia or even Russia . The other nations aren't going to be as well off. Hungary and Poland would need a TFR increase on part with the US baby boom to break even and Germany would need a huge increase

That said if we can tolerate a much less populated "West" and live with a US and maybe Europe with half to a third of the population so long as we hold the land, this is not a bad thing on its face.

Just don't have business models that assume constant growth, Edward Abbey was right, its the creed of the cancer cell

A last point, this is not a new issue

Rudyard Kipling's Night Mail series addressed these issues in an SF format back in his Aerial Board of Control series back in 1905!

@195-I don't think your argument is different from mine, just more explicit and detailed. Blacks could build communities back in the day, or at least better ones, because whites held the whip in hand (in their own civilization, go figure!). The civil rights movement messed them up by removing the whip hand. That's the story.

I think it is, though not by much in the grand scheme. This is one of those probably inescapable false either/ors. Because in the suburbs vs. city struggle, the public debate, as usual, is about technocratic solutions. The Managerial State can think in no other terms. Or, at most, vaguely moralistic arguments from half-baked and ill-formed philosophies like environmentalism.

The real problem shared by both tides--to the city and away from the city--is cultural. (And genetic, but that's a whole other ball of yarn I'll save first another time.) Neither big cities nor suburbs make for good lives. They provide context for modern liberalism's two overriding concerns: technical detail and the satisfaction of material desires. But that's not the way people actually want to live, if they knew better.

They want communities, which can't flourish in either environment. They could, maybe, if suburbs grew just so. They probably did, at some point in history, in cities, but not now. Instead, we have alienation when things run properly, according to the beliefs of Current Year governance. We have rampant dysfunction when they don't.

Why is sprawl the only other option? What's wrong with small and mid-sized cities? A healthy society has a pyramid of city size anyway, roughly twice as many cities of half the population at each step. Dysfunctional societies end up with "primate cities" (no, ha, not meaning full of chimps, though...) that suck in all the population. Unhealthy societies have opportunity concentrated in these over-sized metro area and are rife with corruption of all kinds - political, financial, moral.

Allowing power to congregate in the cities destroys a society. Once a city is empowered to rob the countryside, it will start failing outward.